GE CitizenshipLife Cycle Assessment
As GE continues to develop products and offer a product portfolio with a reduced environmental footprint, the company needs tools like life cycle assessment to substantiate claims, provide a framework for product improvement and provide insight in the development of new products. In 2008, GE’s Global Research Center launched the Ecoassessment Center of Excellence to study the impact of selected GE products and services on the environment and human health.
The center has made significant progress in its work surrounding life cycle assessment. This process quantifies the overall environmental impact of a product, process or business activity throughout its entire life — from “cradle to grave.” The analysis quantifies the impact of each input and output of a product on energy and water consumption, solid waste, human toxicity, summer smog, global warming, acidification, eutrophication and aquatic ecotoxicity.
GE does these comprehensive assessments in compliance with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) guidelines for any assessment that is done to substantiate marketing claims or for external customer use. To complete assessments, the team at the center of excellence consists of experts from the Global Research Center, academics, product stewards, GE businesses and third party reviewers.
In addition to ISO certified life cycle assessments, the company also uses a simplified life cycle assessment process to guide its own internal development teams in looking for ways to improve its design of existing products. Further, the center is also working with GE businesses to impact new products in the early stages of development.
GE is raising awareness of these concepts throughout the business and participating as technical experts on policy issues relating to carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions as a result of their expertise in life cycle assessment. In 2008, the Ecoassessment Center of Excellence completed three full assessments, gathered baseline data on water processing products and worked with two GE businesses to pilot the use of life cycle assessment for ecodesign.